Question about timeframes

I just got metatrade for fun,just to play around with it a bit.
If I’m on the 1H timeframe, can you be sitting there for hours, days, waiting for a trend to form? I get bored quickly and it seems to take for ever for anything happen. Am I doing something wrong? Any tips? Should I be watching multiple markets?

Uh, ya…if you are on H1 each candle/bar represents one hour of time. So, you won’t see another candle until that hour is up. At best the candle will grow up and down or grow a wick.

Probably should go through the babypips school. Going through that you would have known that you want to look at larger timeframes, to see a general bias, then go down to the smaller ones you intend to trade on.

So, if you back up to the 15m candle 4 of those will equal the hour you were just watching on 1H. It’s all the same price action, each chart is just a smaller or larger representation of wedge of time. So, really you have to decide what kind of trading you are doing. Are you scalping, intraday, or swing trading?

You need to find a system.

Plus learn to use & see what your platform is telling you.

On the 1H chart if you zoom out & scroll back you will see
that on say the GBP/USD we have been in a downtrend since
at least mid June, & this latest push down, after a retrace,
is from the end Sept.

At the moment we are in consolidation, will it keep going south downtrend
will it turn round & go north, uptrend? This is where your TA comes
in.

Also take a look at the thread below.

http://forums.babypips.com/newbie-island/18037-i-need-help.html#post76034

Thank you, you two.
I am reading the pips school, but just wanted to play around with the software, so I asked. I am abou half with through th eschool, plus reading various articles along the way.

daydreamer65, so if it’s been on a down trend for months, is there still places tomake money in it? or is it hard? Does that mean those that are long term traders could really be cashing in as it continues to go down?

One more question. So if you are trading H1, how do you do it? (I’ll probably learn it, but I’m curious now) Do you sit there hour after hour waiting for something to happen? Do you check in every few hours to see if something is developing? And what happens when you make an order, I know you can set it when to close, but I assume some people want to do it manually? So do they sit and wait? Or if you are trading by the hour, you just rely on it to automatically close for you?

Thanks again.

Just demo and read the manuals for a few hours. There is no real money at risk. Click all the buttons you need to.

Most of your questions will be answered by just playing around.

Welcome to FX.:slight_smile:

Price still moves up and down in a downtrend. Price doesn’t just go straight up or straight down. (There is plenty of opportunity to long. If it did just move one direction that would be a traders wet dream, you could long or short and just walk away. In a strong downtrend you can make money, just short/sell.) You just look at the overall trend to see which way it is more likely to keep moving. I would study candles they tell a good story, IMO.

daydreamer65, so if it’s been on a down trend for months, is there still places tomake money in it? or is it hard? Does that mean those that are long term traders could really be cashing in as it continues to go down?

Price still moves up and down in a downtrend. Price doesn’t just go straight up or straight down.

As has been mentioned there are varying ways to trade,
with certain platforms traders can set alarms to alert them
when it is time to trade, when their set-ups have connected.

I know a 1H system which works on pin bars, traders wait for their
set-up then trade in the required direction.

There are plenty of others.

I use indicators to show multi time frames.


I’ve been looking for an indicator like that, Pipgobbler. Would you mind sharing where you got it?

Thanks for the help.

Good Morning Everybody!

When I first got into trading I looked at a book on Japenese Candlesticks.
It basically shows you how the candles sort of tell a story. Very heavy on technical anal but when you combine it with fundimentals you get a great idea of how price will behave.

I recommend taking a look into a book that gives you an expanded look at candlesticks and the formations they tend to make … and also what it all means.

As you demo you’ll start to see that some of the experts get it right from time to time.

Good luck dude.
PS - while I wouldn’t recommend day trading I think if you have short attention span you’ll feel more gradification from the shorter than 1hr candles. But like I said I wouldn’t recommend it.

Look in the, “never lose again thread,” it’s one of, “The Rumple Ones/ TRO,” free indicator.

Look in the, “never lose again thread,” it’s one of, “The Rumple Ones/ TRO,” free indicator.

Thanks! If anyone else is looking for it here’s a quick link.